Steam manipulation of positive reviews

[Raffi]

Positive reviews are being shown first regardless of how much engagement a review has, how many people found a negative review helpful, or a games overall/recent review score.

The base Starfield game is currently sitting at 59% overall and 45% recent score. The first 6 reviews shown by steam are positive.

2/6 of those reviews don’t have any engagement. no one found them helpful, no one gave them an award, no one commented on them.

The next 4 reviews are negative and all of the negative reviews have more engagement than 4/6 of the positive reviews.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1716740/Starfield/

Now take a look at the Starfield Shattered Space DLC which is currently sitting at a 30% overall and recent score.

The first 3 reviews are positive. 1/3 positive reviews has a high amount of engagement, but then you look at the other 2 positive reviews… any one of the other 7 negative reviews being showcased have more engagement than both of those two positive reviews combined.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2721670/Starfield__Shattered_Space/

TLDR: Steam is clearly prioritizing the display of positive reviews regardless of how useful, how much engagement the reviews have, or what the games overall/recent score is.

[eram]

change your review filters

[Raffi]

Ursprungligen skrivet av eram:

change your review filters

They are set to the global default which is “most helpful” (also confirmed incognito).

Doesn’t change the fact that valve is manipulating positive reviews to trick users into buying games.

[Crazy Tiger]

It's possible the negative ones have been downvoted much more, which happens a lot in communities with loads of fanboys. Starfield is such a community.

They're shown based on ratios and the like, but since you don't see the downvotes things might look weird.

Personally I always go to the all reviews page and sort them on "most recent" and "negative" when I check reviews.

[Chika Ogiue]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Raffi:

Doesn’t change the fact that valve is manipulating positive reviews to trick users into buying games.

If you base your entire purchasing decision on reviews hosted on one store, instead of doing broader research, you kinda deserve to be tricked.

[Crazy Tiger]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Raffi:

Doesn’t change the fact that valve is manipulating positive reviews to trick users into buying games.

Things are being manipulated anyway. Key activations and the like don't count for the average and the various filters (like the off-topic filter) influence things.

But let's not pretend that this is odd. Steam is a store, they have something to gain. And if you think any other store is honest in such things, you're quite naive.

Personally I'm fine with it. I do my research my own way anyway.

[eram]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Raffi:

Ursprungligen skrivet av eram:

change your review filters

They are set to the global default which is “most helpful” (also confirmed incognito).

Doesn’t change the fact that valve is manipulating positive reviews to trick users into buying games.

yes... change your filters if you dont want to see most helpful

[Aluvard]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Raffi:

Ursprungligen skrivet av eram:

change your review filters

They are set to the global default which is “most helpful” (also confirmed incognito).

Doesn’t change the fact that valve is manipulating positive reviews to trick users into buying games.

I've set mine to global default and got only negatives. Same results via browser.

[Raffi]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Crazy Tiger:

It's possible the negative ones have been downvoted much more, which happens a lot in communities with loads of fanboys. Starfield is such a community.

They're shown based on ratios and the like, but since you don't see the downvotes things might look weird.

Personally I always go to the all reviews page and sort them on "most recent" and "negative" when I check reviews.

While possible because we cannot view the downvotes, if the negative reviews are getting more visible engagement it’s a lot less likely that is occurring.

If it is the case steam is allowing users to manipulate positive reviews and it would even be very easy for a bad guy dev to get bots to mass downvote the negative reviews so the positive ones show first.

[eram]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Aluvard:

Ursprungligen skrivet av Raffi:

They are set to the global default which is “most helpful” (also confirmed incognito).

Doesn’t change the fact that valve is manipulating positive reviews to trick users into buying games.

I've set mine to global default and got only negatives. Same results via browser.

global default will show you whatever the all reviews average is,,

so you went to a game where the all reviews average was negative. now go to a game where the average review is something else to check,.

[Crazy Tiger]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Raffi:

Ursprungligen skrivet av Crazy Tiger:

It's possible the negative ones have been downvoted much more, which happens a lot in communities with loads of fanboys. Starfield is such a community.

They're shown based on ratios and the like, but since you don't see the downvotes things might look weird.

Personally I always go to the all reviews page and sort them on "most recent" and "negative" when I check reviews.

While possible because we cannot view the downvotes, if the negative reviews are getting more visible engagement it’s a lot less likely that is occurring.

If it is the case steam is allowing users to manipulate positive reviews and it would even be very easy for a bad guy dev to get bots to mass downvote the negative reviews.

The latter is why the downvotes have been removed. To not make it visible and give asshats a pleasure less. Though people will be people and will still do such things.

Don't think it doesn't work both ways, mind. Happens with downvoting both negative and positive reviews.

Reviews on a store are 'a' tool, not the only one and not the most reliable one. Review sections are done in ways for the advantage of the store and the sellers, not for us consumers.

[Raffi]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Chika Ogiue:

Ursprungligen skrivet av Raffi:

Doesn’t change the fact that valve is manipulating positive reviews to trick users into buying games.

If you base your entire purchasing decision on reviews hosted on one store, instead of doing broader research, you kinda deserve to be tricked.

What happens when every store/site is manipulating reviews? Not to mention someone can spend dozens of hours doing research and come across a single review that changes their mind. It kinda matters if positive reviews are being shown first on the site you are purchasing a product from.

[eram]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Raffi:

Ursprungligen skrivet av Chika Ogiue:

If you base your entire purchasing decision on reviews hosted on one store, instead of doing broader research, you kinda deserve to be tricked.

What happens when every store/site is manipulating reviews? Not to mention someone can spend dozens of hours doing research and come across a single review that changes their mind. It kinda matters if positive reviews are being shown first on the site you are purchasing a product from.

change your filters,its you thats doing it

[Aluvard]

Ursprungligen skrivet av eram:

Ursprungligen skrivet av Aluvard:

I've set mine to global default and got only negatives. Same results via browser.

global default will show you whatever the all reviews average is,,

so you went to a game where the all reviews average was negative. now go to a game where the average review is something else to check,.

I know, that's why I'm surprised by the results obtained by the OP. I did the same with the game with an overall rating of 88% and the ratio of positive/negative reviews on the display matched those percentages.

[Raffi]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Crazy Tiger:

Ursprungligen skrivet av Raffi:

While possible because we cannot view the downvotes, if the negative reviews are getting more visible engagement it’s a lot less likely that is occurring.

If it is the case steam is allowing users to manipulate positive reviews and it would even be very easy for a bad guy dev to get bots to mass downvote the negative reviews.

The latter is why the downvotes have been removed. To not make it visible and give asshats a pleasure less. Though people will be people and will still do such things.

Don't think it doesn't work both ways, mind. Happens with downvoting both negative and positive reviews.

Reviews on a store are 'a' tool, not the only one and not the most reliable one. Review sections are done in ways for the advantage of the store and the sellers, not for us consumers.

If it truly goes both ways there would be examples of positive games with negative reviews with less engagement being shown first.

The assumption is that there are more people going to the steam reviews, not engaging with positive reviews, and mass downvoting the negative ones.

I don’t see how that is possible outside of malicious devs botting. Open to changing my opinion if someone can find an example of the opposite.

[Raffi]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Aluvard:

Ursprungligen skrivet av eram:

global default will show you whatever the all reviews average is,,

so you went to a game where the all reviews average was negative. now go to a game where the average review is something else to check,.

I know, that's why I'm surprised by the results obtained by the OP. I did the same with the game with an overall rating of 88% and the ratio of positive/negative reviews on the display matched those percentages.

The ratios match, but the point is that positive reviews are always being shown first. ie if you pretend to be a simple consumer and scroll down the store page the first reviews you read are positive even the overall rating is negative and more people found the negative reviews helpful.

For the games with a higher rating, the positive reviews tend to have more engagement so there is no observable issue.